The invention generally relates to the control of peripheral devices in a computer system and, more particularly, to a system and method that provides dynamic control of a device's operating parameters. Dynamic control is achieved without pausing or halting an executing.
In computer systems executing under control of a modern operating system, volume control of audio generators, FM synthesizers, and other audio generating equipment can be effected by control buttons on the computer system's enclosure. An illustrative operating system that provides this capability is the WINDOWS operating system from Microsoft Corporation. In a WINDOWS-compatible application, pressing the control buttons generates a System Management Interrupt (SMI) which, in accordance with WINDOWS operating procedures, invokes a Basic Input-Output System (BIOS) routine that is designed to perform the specified task, e.g., increase or decrease the volume level.
A SMI is a non-maskable interrupt which is generally sent directly to the computer system's host processor. SMI routines are generally part of the BIOS and are designed to process events (e.g., depression of a volume-up button) in a very time efficient manner.